3 Tips for Startup Success and Excellence

Alan Joch has been an independent business and technology writer for more than a decade. His expertise includes server and desktop virtualization, cloud computing, emerging mobile applications, and cybersecurity.

Startup companies face a landscape like few entrepreneurs before them. They have to grapple with traditional and emerging marketing channels, they have to constantly work to win the approval of the empowered and connected customer and they're being inundated with wave after wave of datasets to analyze.

We spoke with three startup entrepreneurs to get their take on what advice they would give to their peers to help navigate the startup landscape.

1. Stay Focused

“There are many bright and shiny opportunities that come your way to attract your attention,” says Raaja Nemani, CEO of BucketFeet. “But we learned to focus on the three to four critical things that we need to do and ignore everything else. If you are not disciplined, you end up not doing anything excellently.”

2. Specialize on Certain Social Media Platforms

"There are so many new and upcoming platforms, and it’s easy to think you have to be part of every new social network,” says Ethan Austin, president of GiveForward. “You can’t succeed with all of them, so concentrate on that one social network that produces the most wins.”

3. Create Informative Versus Promotional Content

“We spent a good amount of time creating lots of content that demonstrates we’re experts in our market,” says Andrew Cronk, CEO of TempoDB. “Our strategy is to become thought leaders, so when people search for information they find us. It’s a big investment, but it’s one that’s paid off and one we’ll continue to make.”